


In All Worlds

by Auchen



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Occasional mentions of Thor/Jane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-19 02:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1452277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auchen/pseuds/Auchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Loki meet in different universes in different ways.</p><p>A collection of Loki/Jane stories written for prompts submitted on tumblr. All are oneshots unless otherwise stated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt:  
> iamartemisday said: Jane has amnesia. Loki takes advantage of it.

A noble man would tell her who she had been. But that’s not what he is.

He’s selfish and greedy, and if he could take advantage of her not remembering the terrible things he had done and his idiotic brother, then he would. But he wasn’t cruel enough to take the stars from her. No, he told her of her love of science, and how she was one of the greatest astrophysicists of her age.

He gives her bits of the truth, holding the rest of it to his chest. Even with her memory in pieces, she’s still Jane. The same bluntness and rashness, the same thirst for knowledge. She somehow still remembers much of the scientific knowledge she learned, which Loki privately celebrates.  ~~  
~~

But still, she’s some how less whole than she once was. One day when they’re sitting in her lab, she does not hold print outs in her hands. She holds a steaming mug of coffee, looking out at the gray September morning.

(You chose this remote spot to live because it’s easiest to see the stars, he told her. It’s partially true, at least.)

Loki is sitting at the small kitchen table, flicking through files, putting them in the correct order. Jane sighs, the coffee mug clinking against the counter as it’s set down. She squints her dark eyes, full of some unexpressed sorrow.

"Is anything wrong?" he asks, keeping his eyes lowered.

"Nothing," she says and breezes out of the room.

He doesn’t follow.

—

It’s not always this way. Some days are the same as ever—better than ever, even. She still looks at him with love, but he doesn’t see the uncertainty clouding her eyes. The memories of what he’d done to her world, and the ghost of Thor lurking in the background are no longer there.

They stay up sleepless nights cataloging new stars, and fighting over theories.

But some days she looks out the windows in the mornings when skies are gray (or worse, when it’s thundering and stormy) and worries her lip, as if she’s trying to remember what she lost.

It’s then Loki almost forgets himself. In some detached part of his mind, he knows this is wrong. He should tell her  _everything,_ even if it means she will hate him for keeping that knowledge from her for so long.

But he doesn’t.

This half-joy will have to be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane is reluctantly going on a date with a guy Darcy set her up with. To her surprise, the date is going well until she meets a stranger on a walk with her date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A humorous response to this prompt:  
> lianaslane said: "How about Loki is up to something sneaky on Midgard but accidentally bumps into a certain astrophysicist."

 

Jane’s eyes burned as she stared into the white, burning screen of her computer. The clock declared that it was 2:30 AM, but that didn’t matter when the submission deadline for her paper on quasars was due at 7:00 and it still wasn’t done being edited. 

The slap of bare feet came in behind her and a shadow fell over the computer screen. Jane tried to ignore it as she erased several sentences that were repetitious.

 The scent of Cheetos assaulted her nostrils, and a large bag of them were thrust in her face.

 "Want some?" Darcy asked.

 She just responded by pushing the bag away and scrolling down the page. Her fingers wandered across her paper strewn desk, searching for her long cold cup of coffee. 

Darcy’s shadow swayed as she shuffled to the side of Jane’s chair and leaned on her desk, watching Jane type for a few moments, crunching on Cheetos. A fine mist of orange dust fell on a crumbled rough draft.

 ”So, I know this guy,” Darcy said, licking her fingers.

Jane paused mid-click, eyes flicking to Darcy. “No.”

 Darcy’s mouth fell open, and she pressed a hand to her chest as if she were wounded. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You’ve been slaving over this quasar paper for a week—”

 ”Two weeks,” Jane corrected.

 ”Whatever. Anyway, you haven’t had any fun! I know you’re still getting over that Donald Blake guy, but it’s been months. But this guy I’m thinking of is super relaxed.”

Jane gritted her teeth. She wasn’t going to get any editing done until she put this argument to bed. “Are we forgetting the incident with Max Richmond?”

 ”Oh come on, the pizza wasn’t  _that_ hard to clean up.” Darcy fished in the bag for another Cheeto.

 ”There were sauce stains on the walls for weeks, Darcy.” Jane narrowed her eyes, remembering the thick, red stains that coated spots of the wall. An area in the corner still had a faded smudge.

 ”Okay, so Max was a bit of a weirdo. It’s not my fault! I thought he was a solid guy. That was the only time someone I set you up with was bad.” Darcy crossed her arms.

 ”What about Jack Forrester?”

 ”I thought you liked that guy? I thought the date went well?” Darcy’s voice rose, as if this mounting evidence against her match making skills was somehow damaging to her reputation.

 ”That was until the second date and he turned out to be dull.” Dull was putting it lightly. He kept trying to hold her hands with his own clammy ones. He also turned down her suggestion of bowling in favor of going to a restaurant and telling her about his position at a brokerage firm.

"Okay. But you know how they say third time’s the charm, right? I swear this I guy I want to tell you about is awesome." Darcy held up both thumbs, like that alone would convince Jane of his character.

Jane rubbed her temples. It was late. The minutes she could spend polishing her paper were quickly flying away. Could it hurt to give in? Maybe this was a moment of weakness, and maybe she would regret allowing herself to agree in the morning. But it was only one date. Maybe it would turn out all right. “Okay. Fine.”

 —

 A week after her delirious night of editing, the day of the date came, and Jane was forced into a blouse that Darcy insisted would look great on her.  It was a gentle blue peplum top. She had to admit it wasn’t as bad as she imagined clothing of Darcy’s choosing to be. The date with the guy—Frank Wright, Darcy repeatedly reminded her—was to be casual. No restaurants, no movies. Just meeting at a little coffee shop with a walk planned afterwards.

The anxiety that had been knotting in Jane’s chest the night before was slowly uncoiling. Maybe Darcy was right, she had been too wound up lately about everything. Shutting herself in with her work, still privately nursing her grief over Donald wasn’t helping anything. She needed something casual.

 By the time 11:00 rolled around she found herself sitting at a small table in a coffee shop squashed between two other larger buildings. She tapped her fingers, eyes wandering around the room, trying to seem as if she wasn’t waiting for anything.

 She pulled out her phone. No texts from Frank. Above her, the speakers played the smoky voice of a band with some ridiculous name like “Big Fish Drowning”. She tapped a finger against her phone’s screen.

 At 11:05, the shop’s bell rang, a friendly tinkle among the thick scent of coffee and the rasp of music. A man stood there, scanning the bent heads of the room. Jane caught his eye. She raised an eyebrow, and waved her phone.

 The man’s face lit up as he headed towards her. He scooted out the chair opposite her and continued to smile.

 Frank wasn’t stunning, but he had a pleasant face. It was all classic squares and gentle browns, his hair brushed away from his equally dark eyes. But looks hardly made up for what could potentially happen in the next few hours.

 She pressed a smile to her face and slipped her phone back into her pocket. “So, you’re Frank. How are you doing?”

 “Quite well, actually. Sorry I was a little late.” Frank rubbed the back of his head, suddenly sheepish.

 Jane waved a hand, giving a little laugh. “Don’t worry about it. So…I suppose we should get our drinks?”

 In the end, Jane settled for an espresso and a scone. Frank only ordered a cappuccino, saying that he wasn’t particularly hungry at the moment. She hoped that wasn’t an omen of things to come over the course of the date. Jane nibbled on her scone, trying to hide the frown that attempted to pull at her lips.

 Frank sipped on his coffee, glancing to look up at her. Brass Balloon crooned metaphors for sadness over the speakers.

 Jane put down the scone. “So! How did you get to know Darcy?” Her shoulders slightly lowered at the sweetness she had forced into her voice.

 “We had a few of the same classes. And we were in the same study group.”

 “Oh, that’s great. Um, what do you do?”

 “Recreation management.” He nodded, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.

Some of the remaining stress dissipated. At least he was involved with something interesting and “fun” as Darcy had coined it. And he did seem rather relaxed.

 “You’re an astrophysicist, right?” Frank clasped his hands and leaned forward.

 Her previous dates hadn’t really expressed much interest in her work. They diverted the subject in favor of something less technical.

“Yes, I am.” She ran a nail against the side of her mug.

 “What have you been doing recently? Darcy mentioned something about a…paper?”

 A smile jumped to her face. Perhaps he was just asking questions do be polite. Even then, she could work with politeness. But as the conversation continued, she found her bouncing questions to him, genuinely interested in what he did. Frank’s face wasn’t a mask of pretend interest. He leaned forward when she explained her work, and laughed at her jokes. She found that they were both driven in their respective careers and had a tendency towards being workaholics.

 Perhaps things were looking up after all.

—

A few people walked past them on the small dirt road. The sky was a clear wash of blue, and wild flowers grew intermittently, bright bursts of color in an otherwise sparse land.

 “People have caught strange videos around here, recently.” Frank waved his hand around the general area.

 Though Jane had fringe theories, as a rule she was skeptical towards supposed otherworldly activity. Still, it could make an interesting conversation. “What sorts of videos?”

“Two cars disappearing and reappearing, strange lights. That sort of thing.” He shrugged.

 Typical fodder for UFO enthusiasts. “They’re probably faked videos.”

Frank laughed. “Yeah, probably. But you haven’t seen the most interesting thing yet.”

 He walked off the path and headed perpendicular to it, dust trailing in his wake. She didn’t see what was particularly interesting about an empty plain, but she followed close behind him. In the distance, the shadow of a person stood looking down at something.

 “Is this your way of impressing me?” She bit the inside of her mouth. Maybe she shouldn’t be quite so forward. She should still be cautious.

 “Maybe.” Frank raised his eyebrows and smiled.

 They walked for a few more minutes. As they got closer to Frank’s mysterious destination, she saw that the person that had been standing there still hadn’t moved. Maybe it had something to do with what she and Frank were going to look at.

 When they stopped, she saw there was a crater with nothing in the middle, though a strange designs fanning out from the edges of it. Her stomach fluttered. Probably another fake.

Still, though. This was  _interesting._ Even if it wasn’t evidence of aliens, it still begged the question what the motives were of the people that were creating these fakes.

 She raised her head. The figure she had seen in the distance was standing opposite her and Frank, his eyes flicking between the two of them. He had smooth, slender features that didn’t seem like they belonged in this bare landscape. Jane pulled her eyes from him.

 Frank nodded his head and whistled. “I told you it was pretty strange.”

She started walking around the edge of it, careful that her feet didn’t smudge the designs. “I wonder how they made this. It’s so intricate. They must’ve had some sort of stencil, because they couldn’t do this all in the dark.”

 “It’s not a fake.”

 Jane started and looked up. The stranger was still looking at her. “Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said—it’s not a fake.” He nodded at the crater.

 “And how would you know that?” She crossed her arms. Frank toed a pile of dirt and raised an eyebrow at her.

 “Because I’ve taken samples of the dirt, and I’ve been studying this site since I first discovered it.”

 Jane snorted. “Anyone can say that they’re a scientist. I sincerely doubt your credentials.”

 The man spread his hands. “I can prove it, if you wish.”

 “Please do.”

 “Um, Jane—“ Frank held up a finger.

 “Just a moment, Frank.”

—

The rest of the afternoon proved to be more interesting than Jane first imagined. It turned out the man at the crater  _was_ in fact a scientist. She felt rather embarrassed at doubting him, but she couldn’t really have been too careful. He told her about the samples he had taken, and how the anomalies in the area could possibly correspond with the crater.

For his part, Frank wasn’t particularly pleased with this diversion. In hindsight, Jane realized that it had been a bit rude to interrupt their date with her scientific outburst. Things had been going well at first, but Frank paled in comparison to the scientists she had met. Frank didn’t text her back the next day, or the day after that. But the third day following the date when Jane was beating herself up for messing it up, her phone buzzed.

 She flicked it on.

  _Meet me at the crater. I have something interesting to discuss._

_-Lucas_

Jane tossed the phone back on the table, looking at it like it was diseased. When had she given that scientist her number? Was he some sort of stalker? She picked up the phone again and read the message.

Oh. She  _had_ given him her number, she remembered. Hastily scribbled in the margins of his notes while they had been excitedly discussing the implications of this discovery. Jane had forgotten in the midst of her exhilaration.

 Darcy’s shadow fell over her again. Jane glanced up.

 “Is that Frank? You didn’t tell me how your date went.” Darcy held a spoon and bowl of ice cream. It was her self-declared “crappy rom-com” day that Jane had resolutely avoided for the past three weeks.

 “No, it’s not.” Jane swiped the message away.

 Darcy shrugged. “All right. If you’ve found some other guy, that’s a-okay. Give me a yell if you want to watch Fifty First Dates, though.” She flounced off into the next room.

That was fine by Jane. She had somewhere to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yes, Loki was just pretending to be a scientist. In fact, he was probably responsible for the anomalies. :)  
> 2\. Also, all the band names I mentioned were made up.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the coming of the spring, Loki, the son of a Northern conqueror, notices his attraction to Jane, a minor noblewoman that Thor has been courting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based on a prompt asking me to continue my Dark Ages AU posted on tumblr. This ended up being more of a rewrite of that AU with Loki and Thor being younger and unmarried.

_April is the cruellest month, breeding_

_Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing_

_Memory and desire, stirring_

_Dull roots with spring rain._

—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

 

—

 He would blame it on the nature of spring. It was the season when dying things renewed themselves and the air was filled with an unnamed want. **  
**

The only thought he’d given the girl was to grace her with a biting comment or a prank—all in fun of course.

There was no other reason for Loki to notice her beauty, or the fact that intelligence perhaps flickered behind her eyes. It had first happened when he discovered in the library, several nights ago.

He had expected to be alone, but there, between a pile of stacked tomes sat Jane, flicking through a book detailed with illustrations of the constellations. He only lingered there for a moment, something strange settling in the pit of his stomach before he hurried out.

The only thing to do to quell these new feelings was to have some fun at her expense. And so the next day he left an apple in the library accompanied with a note with Thor’s name signed to it. The apple had been hollowed out with a beetle placed inside.

Several hours later, he was in the stables, getting ready to clear his head by riding. Surely the clear air would do him some good. But her small feet came pounding into the stables, his presents clenched in her hand.

Loki pretended to ignore her. “Yes, saddle that one,” he said to the stable boy, pointing at a bay steed.

“Very well, sir.”

Jane stalked around to face him. She shook the note in his face and jabbed a finger at it. “Did you really expect me to think Thor would do something as childish as this?”

“Of course I didn’t.” He shrugged, watching the stable boy struggle with the fidgety horse.

“Then why did you do it?” She threw the apple onto the ground. A horse in one of the stalls raised its head, ears perking at the thrown food.

“Because I thought it would be amusing to hear what you had to say.”

Jane’s fingers twitched, crumpling the note that he wrote. She shook her head, teeth scraping her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Indeed. You should not be.” He was almost disappointed. He thought the girl had a bit more fire inside of her. But then, that was good. Wasn’t that the point of this exercise? To quash any ridiculous feelings that he was beginning to have?

“You’ve always been jealous of the things that Thor has.” She whirled around, pounding out of the stables.

Loki clenched his teeth as the stable boy hesitated beside him with the horse. The impudence of the girl to say such things.

Especially since they cut so close to the truth.

—

Loki avoided her over the course of the following week. If he saw her dark head coming down the hall, he would turn the other way, pretending to have something to attend to. The only time he had to see her was during political meetings. She was a minor local noblewoman, so her presence was little more than a formality to placate the conquered people to show that the Northmen were not going to silence their opinions.

Even then, she avoided his eyes during the meetings as he spun sly words to sooth merchants complaining over grain prices.

—

At the end of the second week, things seemed to be going well, until he came into the library and spotted her in the corner. Loki frowned. This avoidance had gone on long enough. He wasn’t about to abandon his sanctuary because of Thor’s woman.

So he straightened himself and strode to a shelf, picking up a slim volume. He flopped down into his usual place and began reading, a familiar tale of war unfolding before his eyes.

He was interrupted by a small clearing of the throat from the corner. His eyes flicked up. Jane pointed to the book he was reading, her eyes black in the dim fire light. “That’s one of my favorites.”

So she was trying to make peace. He shrugged. “I like it well enough.”

He pulled his gaze away and continued reading. They were silent for the rest of the time he remained there.

—

It became a familiar routine. Whenever he came into the library these days, Jane was sequestered in her little corner, shadowed by jagged towers made of old books. They didn’t always speak, but sometimes she would agree with his choice in reading material. Loki would even occasionally say something about her literature.

They were still tense around each other, but he still didn’t make the effort to avoid her. It was too much work, and besides, whatever ridiculous notions that had crept into his mind over finding her attractive had long passed.

—

One day a storm lashed at the building, wind screaming and sucking out the warmth that tried to cram into whatever nooks it could find. Loki was agitated, the electricity in the air setting his blood on fire with restlessness. He tried to concentrate on a book detailing battle tactics, but with candles guttering continuously across the room, it was hard to concentrate.

From her usual corner Jane chuckled. He wrinkled his nose and frowned, hunching further in his chair. “What do you find so amusing?”

“I’m finding it hard to read as well,” she said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he pointed out, narrowing his eyes at her.

“You never answer me in a straightforward manner, why should I?” She shrugged and smiled.

"You think of me as nothing but a brutish Northman, don’t you?"

"You haven’t given me reason to think of you as anything else." Her face had suddenly grown serious, and she turned her attention back to whatever she had been reading.

As the storm howled, Loki realized he had nothing to say to that.

—

The next day was clear and green, the ground satiated with the moisture from the spring downpour. Loki pushed his horse hard over the castle grounds, and when he grew tired of that, he rode it into the forest, hoping to drive out game that lurked in the underbrush. After searching for several hours, he found nothing.

He returned in the evening to the voices of Odin and Thor snarling at each other like bears. Loki leaned against the door jamb, peering around it to watch their battle of words.

"I have allowed you your dalliance long enough. You cannot marry the girl. She is nothing but a minor noble." Odin stabbed his finger at Thor.

"It would create a political alliance with the natives of this kingdom!" Thor shot back.

"Hardly. There are far more important women that would create a stronger alliance."

Of course Odin was going on a political alliances. Nothing was more important than that, was it? Thor’s hand shook at his father’s words, Odin’s logic striking home hard. These spats were nothing unusual, though they had become less common after Thor had been seemingly tamed by Jane. But this one was more raw, and more visceral than any Loki had seen in a while.

—

Loki was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed when he met. Thor in the hallway. “You had quite the loud row with our father.”

"Don’t act as if you would be sorry to see her leave,” Thor said. His voice still trembled with heat.

Loki pressed a hand to his chest. “I wouldn’t think of pretending. You know I’m the model of honesty.”

His brother’s eyes narrowed. Thor was not as ill tempered as he once was, but the red of repressed anger flooded his skin. “I’m not in the mood for your flippancy.”

“Are you ever?”

Thor just stalked passed him, rage and grief boiling under the surface.

—

Though the hallway leading to the library was dark, he saw the stocky smudge of his father standing in the middle. Odin’s remaining eye swept over him, measuring him.

When Loki was a child, Odin smiled and said the sacrifice of his lost eye allowed him seer abilities. He said it especially allowed him to see Loki and Thor when they were doing something wrong. Even though Loki had long outgrown that story, sometimes he still felt as if Odin’s gaze flayed him down to his bones and saw the young child within still trying to measure up to the true son. 

"I hope that you are not think of doing something foolish," Odin said. But his voice was low and weary.

Loki just smiled and raised his brows, slipping past his father in the darkness. He wasn’t about to do what Odin wanted. The time to be that son was too far gone.

—

Loki stood near the doorway of the library, where Jane sat slumped over a table, books spread out in front of her.

The torchlight laid her bare, illuminating her squinted, red eyes. She pulled a book closer, as if hoping that its words would drown out the reality of what Odin must have told her.

Perhaps he shouldn't have doubted her. And after all, people that his father rejected tended to be worth something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trick that Loki pulled was an actual medieval prank. You can read about it here: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Medieval_Pranks_and_Tricks


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane, a scientist on a research ship, one day comes across another ship stranded in space that is sending out a distress signal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for this prompt: Astronaut Jane Foster finds Loki floating in the void of space.

The inside of the ship was washed in red emergency lights. They pulsed slowly, as if they were the heartbeat of ship itself as it slowly died, sending out a distress signal into the empty fields of asteroids.

But it seemed that the signal had not been in vain, she thought, as she wandered the halls with a flashlight clenched in her hand. Jane and her crew had been wandering this expanse of the system, scanning for planets in the habitable zone. When one was found, she and her crew would land on it and research it. But rather than find that, Jane’s crew had detected the signal, weak and bleating.

The footsteps of her ships’ engineers echoed throughout the adjoining hallways. Something deep within the abandoned ship groaned. Jane’s forehead furrowed. What had happened here? There were no visible signs of a collision.

 

She shined her flashlight over the walls, looking for answers that weren’t presenting themselves.

 “Jane!”

 She jumped, bumping up against the wall. Darcy’s pale face glowed red in front of her. Jane cleared her throat, and her fingers twitched against the flashlight’s handle.

 “Don’t surprise me like that,” she said.

“Sorry about that, boss, but I found something I think you’ll want to see.” Darcy tilted her head in the direction she had just come.

 Jane’s shoulders relaxed. Perhaps they were going to finally get some answers after all.

—

Darcy and Jane stood in front of rows of tubes, morbid and coffin-like. She leaned closer, standing on the tips of her toes to look at the window of glass on one of them. Jane swiped away the white fog, squinting her eyes to peer at the woman inside. Her skin shimmered with ice crystals.

 “These are cryotubes. For whatever reason, the crew must’ve figured they couldn’t solve the problem and deciding to freeze themselves in hope that someone would find them.”

 “Well, we did. Yay!” Darcy held up her thumbs. Jane gave her a withering look.

Jane pursed her lips and crossed her arms, looking into the frozen woman’s tomb. “We should try to radio for help to any other ships that are nearby. We don’t have the gear to help these people.”

“Who else would be near here? We haven’t gotten signals from any other ships for four days or more.”

“There’s a small colony planet past this belt, I think. There would have to be supply—”

 Jane was interrupted by something green blinking in the corner of her eye. She turned her head, and saw a light flickering on one of the cryotubes, drifting in an out amidst a sea of red light.

 “Um, boss?” Darcy waved her hand in front of Jane.

 “Do you see that?” She walked along the row of tubes, following the light’s signal.

 Darcy trailed along behind her, mumbling something under her breath. At the very end, Jane reached the tube with the blinking light.

 “That’s weird. What do you think it means?” Darcy touched a finger to the light.

 “Fingerprint accepted. System failure is detected. Please input instructions,” a calm, mechanical female voice said.

 Darcy jumped back, looking around the room, even though she had experience with AI.

“System failure? In the whole ship?” Jane asked the voice.

 “Cryogentic tube #30’s system is failing. The subject inside must be removed, or they shall die,” the AI announced, calmly giving the crew member inside his death sentence. Jane’s heart sunk.

 “Well, there’s nothing we can do for them,” Darcy said, and began to head for the exit.

“Wait a minute, where are you going?” Jane whirled around.

 “What if the crew contracted some kind of horrible zombie virus or something and that’s why they put themselves to sleep? There’s red flags  _all_  over.” Darcy waved her arms around the emergency light riddled room.

 “One, zombies don’t exist, and two, I’m not leaving until I try to help whoever’s in there.” She turned back to the tube.

 “Zombies or not, my point still stands. Do what you want, I’m leaving.” Darcy’s voice was carried away down the hallway.

 Too worried to concern herself with Darcy’s sarcasm, Jane bit her lip. She had no experience with cryotubes, but she suspected that the process was delicate. Her eyes flicked to the light.

 “What do I need to do to get the subject out?”

—

It turned out that the process wasn’t particularly hard. It involved no physical contact with the subject, and only required input into the room’s computer. The hardest part had been finding the computer, because it was in a dark corner of the room where little light reached.

 Jane squinted, her flashlight washing over the computer’s keyboard as the cryotube’s AI dictated to her the exact steps needed to release the person inside.

 Her stomach churned as the minutes passed during the process. What if she did something wrong and killed the person inside? One wrong keystroke and it was all over for them.

 She turned her head to look over at the tube. The fog on the glass was beginning to dissipate, streaking down the window and warping the image of the person inside. Jane swallowed, and typed in another line of code. The AI’s eerily calm voice was beginning to raise the hair on the back of her neck. Something within the ship whined and hissed.

 “Process complete,” the AI chirped. “The subject may now be released from the Cryogentic tube.”

 Jane let out a burning breath and ran her hand through her hair, wiping away the sweat that had collected on her forehead. She rose from her seat and made her way back to the last cryotube. She leaned forward and saw that the person inside was a man with sharp cheekbones and slightly long, damp hair. His nostrils barely twitched with a sign of breath.

 Jane pressed a finger to the light.

 “Fingerprint accepted,” said the AI.

 The door swung open with a loud clang, and the man’s eyes snapped open. He gasped in a convulsive breath like a drowning man, gulping in all that he could. She wasn’t prepared for him to stagger out and crumple on his legs like a young, confused animal.

 Jane stumbled towards him, easing him to the floor before he hit his head. It wouldn’t make her much of a rescuer to let the person she saved give himself a concussion.

 He heaved in another breath, chest wheezing with lungs long disused. Jane’s eyes flickered around the room, suddenly realizing that she didn’t know who he was, or what his intent would be, even to someone who had saved him. He was probably confused and disorientated, and there was no telling whether that would make him violent. Perhaps it was best to leave now.

 She began to stand. His blue, too-bright eyes locked on her. He reached for her wrist.

“It’s rude to leave someone you just saved,” he said, and gave a sharp smile.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane has been frequenting the same coffee shop for a year, bringing her laptop and homework. The comfortable routine is interrupted by her one-time project partner, Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for starzangelus' prompt "running away".

The closest she got to being a teenage runaway was spending half her time in her town’s local coffee shop. It was a narrow place, wedged between two other buildings. From the outside, it wasn’t much to look at, but on the inside, Jane was greeted by the thick, inviting scent of coffee and people like her hunched over laptops, hammering away.

The routine began after dad died.

It was hard to stay home after that and walk past the empty chairs her dad once sat in. Jane found herself often going into his office looking through his books, as if they could contain some sort of hidden message meant for her. She never found anything, and the lingering scent of his cologne always drove her away.

And then there was her mom. She looked at Jane with dark, sad eyes, wishing she could keep her daughter from drifting, but she couldn’t because she was lost at sea herself.

Things became easier as the months passed, and then became a year. The wound remained, but it was beginning to scar over. But the routine continued. After dinner she drove to the shop with her laptop laid in the passenger seat and worked on homework until 9:00. Essays were born and raised in the shop, and sheets of paper scattered with formulas and math homework filled their trash.

Tonight, Jane tapped her finger on her lips as she stared at an extra credit essay for her Astronomy class. It concerned moons in the solar system that possibly contained water and that could harbor life. She decided to erase several sentences.

She leaned down to rummage through her backpack, hoping she had one of her research books. The internet was a valuable resource, but she found that books could contain just as valid information.

The shop’s door chimed open, but she paid it no mind. She continued to shift through crumpled stacks of paper. She should probably clean her backpack out soon. An old plastic fork jabbed her palm.

Yep, she should definitely clean it.

Footsteps tapped against the tile and stopped behind her. A pair of eyes burned into her neck. She stopped sifting.

“Well, who should I find here but Ms. Foster?” said a rich, obnoxiously arrogant voice.

Jane sighed and sat up. “Loki.” She turned back to her laptop screen and pretended to type.

They’d had US History together last semester, during which they were paired on a project about Andrew Jackson. It had proved an unfortunate partnership, because Loki’s contributions to the project mostly extended to snide comments and pointing out typos.

She wasn’t personally offended. The rich, foreign boy considered most people to be plebeians. But she certainly wasn’t in the mood to repeat the experience.

“You cannot bring yourself to say a simple “hello”? Honestly, I thought we’d really built up team rapport during our project.” He poured false hurt into his voice.

“Yes, because sitting off to the side eating a sandwich while doodling pictures of Andrew Jackson killing people while making sarcastic comments counts as teamwork.” She stabbed at the keys.

“I mainly considered my role as a supervising one. I could tell that you were competent enough to work without me.” A chair squealed against the floor as he pulled it closer to sit at her table.

Jane bit back another retort. He was baiting her, because that’s what he did. She would just ignore him and keep working on her essay. She went back to clacking away at her laptop.

She was stopped by the sound of rustling papers. Loki was digging through her backpack, stacking notebooks, papers, and research books onto the table.

She jumped from her chair and slapped his hand. “Stop that!”

But he didn’t. Instead, he flipped through one of her notebooks, squinting and pursing his lips. “This handwriting is little more than chicken scratches. Though, I can make out a few words.”

Jane made a grab for the notebook, but he stood and held it in the air out of her reach. “Ah, this is a composition notebook for your English class. I must say, this poem is…fascinating. You describe the golden hair of the man in the poem so _vividly_. I think my heart is racing already.”

Her face burned. Yes, it was a poetry assignment. Her class had been studying the medieval concept of courtly love and she was supposed to a medieval lyric poem in that style. She hadn’t noticed until she had written it that the man the poem described looked something like Loki’s brother.

“You know, my brother has mentioned you before.” Loki continued to page through the notebook, eyes fixed on her. His mouth curled in a wry smile.

Plenty of girls had a crush on Thor, but that didn’t stop her heart from stuttering. “…He has?”

“Ah, careful. You’ve gone terribly red. And yes, he indeed has. I believe you have Calculus together. He said something about…oh…what was it?” Loki tapped a finger on his chin. “I seem to have forgotten.”

He tossed the notebook back onto her table. Why hadn’t he taken it? It would have been perfectly in character for him to do so. But then, he seemed to like to like to do the unexpected sometimes.

“Lovely talking to you, Jane,” he said, already walking away from her table and towards the doors. He flicked a hand in her direction.

Jane slowly released a breath. Well, that was…strange. She hadn’t pegged Loki as the sort of guy who would go into coffee shops.

She turned back to her laptop, settling her hands over the keys. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the book she had been looking for on the top of the stack Loki had made.

—

She returned to the shop the next night, though apprehension twisted inside of her. What if he returned? But as she scanned the rows of tables and chairs pushed against the walls, she didn’t see his dark head.

All she saw was the regular crowd of messy haired, easygoing patrons bent over coffee, either quietly talking or reading.

There was no need to worry. Yesterday was just a freak occurrence. And even if he _had_ showed up, she wasn’t going to let Loki drive her away from her place of comfort. Jane settled down at her usual table with its scuffed top and black chairs. She plunged back into her essay, describing the water plumes on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.

By the time it was eight, she’d opened ten new tabs on her browser. She was clicking through them, trying to find one of her sources when the door chimed. She wouldn’t look. It was probably some regular coming in late. That had happened plenty of times before.

Jane scooted closer to the table despite herself. Feet shuffled across the floor. A large hand tilted down her laptop screen.

“We meet again.” Loki just smiled at her.

“Against my own will.” She nudged her backpack closer to her.

“Ah, if you did not want to meet me, then you would have chosen a different study spot, because I have decided that I quite enjoy this shop.”

“Funny, I thought of you more as the kind of guy who would prefer to spend his nights drenched in cheap alcohol while holding a red solo cup.” She smiled at him.

“Ooh. What a wounding comment, truly.” He sat down and put his feet up on the table. Jane tried to push them away with one of her books, but no such luck.

Fine. She would work with this. She dealt with him once before. Taking a deep breath, she sat up straight and continued to click through her tabs.

Surprisingly, he left her alone for the remainder of the time. He picked up one of her books and read through it as she typed, and she almost forgot he was there. By the time 9:00 rolled around, when she looked up he was gone.

Making sure she saved her essay, Jane dumped her books and papers back into her backpack, promising to clean it out this weekend. She jostled her keys in her pocket as she went through the door, heading for her car in the packed parking lot.

She slipped her backpack into the passenger seat, gentle as ever, and she backed out, heading for home.

—

Jane was halfway home when she realized she had left one of her research books at the shop. And it wasn’t her own, either. It was on loan from the library.

She glanced at the clock. 9:10. The shop was open until 11:30, there was still ample time to get there. She whirled around, feeling somewhat daring as the tires squealed and she zoomed back toward the shop. The parking lot was still rather packed, so she squeezed in between a jacked up truck and a blue car that had its fender crunched. She narrowly missed giving the blue car a crooked mirror.

She sighed as she walked through the doors of the coffee shop again and headed for the counter, where a smiling young barista stood.

“Excuse me; I forgot one of my books here. It has a galaxy on the cover. Have you seen it?”

“Your friend said that you’d come looking for it. He brought it home for safe keeping. Quite nice of him.” The barista gave her a conspiratorial smile. Jane sensed the implied “boy” next to the “friend”.

“Um, I don’t know his address.” Her fingers twitched. He was just causing more unneeded trouble.

“That’s all right! He gave it to me.” The barista slid a slip of paper across the counter. All it had was an address and a drawing of Andrew Jackson shooting a man. Of course.

“Thanks,” Jane said, with a gash of a smile. She snatched the slip and crumpled it between her fingers.

“No problem!” The barista waved as she walked away, no doubt smiling away and hoping Jane had a lovely time with her “friend”.

—

Jane had never been intimidated by a house before. But as she sat in front of the Odinson’s house, that’s what she felt. It was a massive beast, fed by wealth and taste, looming before her with dim, glaring eyes for windows. She sat in the long drive, hands gripping the steering wheel for a moment. Her old, mangled car seemed like an insult to this gargantuan tribute to capitalism.

It would be fine. She would just get her book back, that’s all there was to it. She left her car, keys jabbing grooves into her palm. Her footsteps echoed through the night and up the steps to the door.

There was a large knocker on the polished wooden door, gripped in the mouth by some feral beast. Did his family have a taste for psuedo-medieval architecture? She grasped the knocker and pounded twice.

After a few moments, the door creaked open. Loki stood with his signature irritating grin. She thought of the car with the mashed fender and decided she wanted to inflict the same sort of damage to his smile so it would be crooked forever more.

“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” He leaned against the door frame.

“You couldn’t just give it to a barista to give back to me the next time I came by?” She crossed her arms, glaring.

“How else would I get you to come to my house?” Loki raised his eyebrows.

“Most guys would just ask a girl to come.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I am not ‘most guys’.”

She could hear the pretentious implied quotation marks. She glared harder.

“Let’s just get this over with. Give me my book back.” Jane started to walk forward, but Loki put his arm out, barring her way.

“Not even a ‘please’?” He frowned deeply.

“ ‘Please’, give my book back.” Jane started forward again. Loki moved his arm.

“Also, if you promise to help me with my next US History project, I promise that I won’t tell my dear brother about your awful poetry.”

She whirled around. He had his arms crossed, and smiling serenely at her. So that was his game? It could’ve been worse, she supposed. And she certainly didn’t want Thor to know about the poem.

Jane held her hands up in surrender. “Fine.”

“We’ll start tonight.” Loki started to walk down the hallway, the hardwood polished to a ridiculous gleam.

“Tonight? What will I tell my mom? She doesn’t want me spending time with some guy I barely know.”

“I shall call her. She knows my family’s impeccable reputation of course, and knows that I worked with you previously on a project. She’ll think nothing of it.” He waved the hand in the air, as if it was all completely fine.

He was unbelievable, but she still found herself dialing her mom’s number and handing her cellphone to him. He took it from her with a mouthed a ‘thank you’, and when her mom picked up, Loki turned on the charm.

Once done, he tossed her phone back to her.

“Follow me. The project involves a lot of writing, which of course you will do, and I will be involved in creating a model of a man with his hand stuck in an industrial machine.” He tapped a finger on his lip. “I think we will need ketchup.”

“Or food coloring?” she offered. She didn’t want to get a ketchup stain on her new pants. (New pants rarely happened to her.)

“Perfect. See, this is why we need each other.”

Jane sighed. What had she gotten herself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I late to the High School AU bandwagon? If I am, that’s too bad because I had a lot of fun writing this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane's flight has been delayed. Sleep deprived and cranky, she has the misfortune to run into a smug businessman who decides to play a guessing game with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for an AU fic prompt meme. Both an anon and storiesaholic requested "stuck-in-an-airport-because-the-flights-were-SO-VERY-delayed-and-it’s-like-two-am AU".

 

If the plane had left when it was supposed to she would probably be heading to her hotel by now and crashing on a marginally comfortable bed. But no. Jane was stuck here at this air terminal for an indeterminate amount of time, surrounded by people milling around like confused cattle. One or two of them smelled like cattle too.

 When the flight delay had first been announced she wanted to hurl her luggage at the loud speaker, which probably would have done a considerable amount of damage taking into account the number of things that she had packed. But she didn’t, because Jane liked not being arrested.

 Currently she was pacing, her rolling luggage creaking behind her. Her legs were getting cramped from sitting, and there was no other way to release her nervous energy. She certainly didn’t feel like peacefully reading on her iPad at the moment.

 Someone sitting down near gave her a glare as she went left again. She studiously ignored him, which was one of the best ways to bother someone. She looked at the clock again. _2:00 AM_ , it read.

2:00 AM was an old friend that usually came visiting when her soul was only made of coffee and anger as she furiously edited a report to submit before the deadline. 2:00 AM was the kind of friend that she wanted to kick out of her house and avoid eye contact with if she saw him at the grocery store. And she certainly didn’t want to see him now.

And now that she had gone down that path of thought, she realized she was rather tired. She needed something to keep her going, so Jane cast her eyes down the direction of the food and drink vendors. Little signs blinked, happily announcing their mediocre selection. She sighed, and gave in to her body’s urgings to refuel itself.

 To the irritated man’s relief, she turned away from him and dragged her quietly squealing luggage behind her. The scent of greasy foods and various strengths of coffee intermingled in her nose, an unpleasant mixture that signaled desperation. She paused before the rows of booths. At the far end there was a frozen yogurt stand, and various coffee stands dotted the landscape. She decided against the latter, because she was hoping to be able to get some sleep when the plane finally boarded.

 In the middle of the first row there was a pizza stand, operated by a man with dark circles bruising his eyes like everyone else. He blearily handed a woman a piece of pizza on a greasy napkin. There were no better options, so Jane entered the line. In front of her towered a slender tree of a man in an expensive business suit, long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He clutched a fancy and deadly looking smart phone in his pale hand.

 “I know,” he sighed into the phone with an English accent that had obviously never seen a hard day’s work. Someone on the other end said something loudly in a voice that sounded like rocks.

The businessman’s shoulders went stiff. “There’s nothing I can do about it! I know they’re counting on me being there, but it isn’t as if I control the weather.”

 The other person grunted something back that sounded like it might have contained an expletive. “Good bye,” the businessman said, voice dripping with thinly concealed poison. He stabbed the phone’s screen.

Jane suppressed a snort at his expense. Poor man, dining with the plebeians.

 While Jane was eavesdropping on the high powered conversation, the line had slowly inched forward to the front of the booth. She could smell the scent of grease and assorted meats and cheeses. It was the scent of her desperate college years.

The man in front of her ordered a simple cheese pizza. His phone rang with a song that sounded dark and edgy, and with a sigh he dragged it out of his pocket. A few moments later, he was handed a slice, scooted over a bit, but still yammered away on the phone, unaware of her dietary needs as well. His head blocked the menu that hung over the booth.

 Jane stood on her tip-toes. “Excuse me,” she said, putting as much honey in her voice as someone could who had been awake for 15 (or 16?) hours.

 He waved a stupidly manicured hand in the air to emphasize something he said. Someone behind her had cut in line in front of her and was ordering. Jane curled her lip. She tapped on the man’s shoulder.

 “I’m trying to order!” she snapped.

To his credit, he looked genuinely surprised and stepped out of the way. Though it was petty, it made her feel smug that she had made some tycoon get way so she could buy a piece of bread dripping with drenched with cheese. Perhaps it was out of this wave of triumph that she also ordered a slice of cheese pizza as well to show him that they were in the same social class in this world called Terminal B.

 “Thank you,” she chirped when the red eyed booth owner slipped the pizza into her hand. She turned to walk away, but a hand grabbed her shoulder.

Jane whirled around to be met by the face of the insufferable businessman. And _of course_ he was attractive, why wouldn’t he be? Naturally his genetics had to complete the businessman stereotype. His cheekbones looked as deadly as his phone did.

 “What do you want?” she said, voice sharp, all patience leeched away.

 “I thought that I could apologize by carrying your luggage back to your seat,” he said.

 Well that was…unexpected. But she looked up at his eyes. They were clever and green, and in them she could see that something more than simple altruism had driven him. She could just refuse and avoid him altogether, but she wasn’t feeling very selfless tonight, so she just shrugged and nodded. She started the journey back to her pacing path, taking the first bite of pizza.

“What brings you to this circle of hell?” he asked.

 “An Astrophysics Conference. I’m supposed to be presenting some of my research on Saturday. What about you?”

 The businessman let out a little hum. “Well, outright telling you isn’t very fun, is it?”

 Great. She was stuck with a _smarmy_ one percenter to boot. This had all the trappings of a cheesy comedy film in the making. Its tag line would be something like: She can’t stand him, but before the end of the night, he’ll have her seeing stars.

“Just tell me. My brain isn’t functioning at its fullest capacity right now,” Jane said, not looking at him.

 “Even better. Sleep deprived brains are the most imaginative.”

The two of them had made it to her pacing spot, but he wasn’t leaving. Fine, she’d humor him. Maybe after that he’d go away.

 “I don’t know. Are you part of MI5?”

The man sighed and bowed his head. “How cliched. I was hoping for something better.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t say I was an author, did I?” She raised her hands to defend the fake occupation she had conjured for him.

 But a sharp grin crossed his face. “I’ll give you two more guesses.”

 “And if I don’t get it right?” Jane raised an eyebrow.

 “Then I will ensure that we are forced to sit next to each other on the flight.” He leaned down so they were closer to eye level. Her neck almost didn’t hurt when she looked up at him now.

Jane narrowed her eyes. Was it worth it? Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to guess what he did for a living. The miller’s daughter had agreed to try to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name three times and came out all right in the end, and this scenario was a lot less harrowing that that one. She closed her eyes and shrugged. “All right, it’s a deal.”

 He pressed his hands together. “Excellent.”

 Jane sucked her lip for a moment, narrowing her eyes. What could he be? A stock broker? That would explain his accent in a heavily American area, and also why he was traveling in the dead of night (or the morning. Which one was it considered again?)

 “Stock broker,” she guessed.

 “Ooh, wrong again,” he replied with a grin.

 She threw her hands in the air. The businessman just laughed and said, “Last chance.”

 Last chance indeed. If she got this one wrong, she would be stuck with this snake in a suit for the rest of the night. And she had a feeling that he wasn’t going to let her get the sleep she sorely needed if that happened.

All right, it was time to enter detective mode. She scanned his clothing. There were no distinguishing pins or clips on his tie or suit, nor were there any on his luggage. So, he was rich and English. What did that mean? Was he a secret prince?

 Jane shook her head. No, that was definitely the sleep deprivation talking. That, and Darcy had made her watch a chick flick with that premise two days ago.

 “Do you give up?” he asked, voice singing with triumph.

 She laughed. “No! I’m just thinking. Give me a minute.”

 Jane squinted. He was pale, so he didn’t get out in the sun much. So his job didn’t involve a lot of time for sightseeing during his travels. …But that wasn’t necessarily true, maybe he had a lot of leisure time, but he preferred to stay inside. Or he mostly traveled to cloudy places. She wanted to growl in frustration, but she wouldn’t. Jane Foster did not admit defeat that easily. He had that sort of offbeat look, so maybe he was the CEO of a technology company? That could explain his phone.

 “Are you a tech CEO?” she asked, fists clenched.

The businessman pressed a finger to his lips, and squinched his eyes. He walked closer to her, and leaned down. His cologne smelled like hundred dollar bills. “No,” he whispered, and backed away, eyebrows raised.

 Jane slumped in defeat, pressing a hand to her head. And to think a few minutes ago she had thought this night couldn't get any worse.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane soon realizes she’s sorely going to regret breaking her self imposed exile from the teacher’s lounge when Darcy tells her a rumor concerning her and a certain English teacher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> For the au post, could you do the high school teachers au plz! Bonus for crazy students in love with a *cough cough* possibly black haired green eyed *cough cough* professor!
> 
> glitterisfitter said:  
> Hello there, how about ‘forget high school students AU i want a high school teachers AU’

Jane didn’t often venture into the teacher’s lounge. She found that it was often a den of gossip disguised by sweet smiles and asking about lesson planning and suggesting that she could perhaps use some new clothes, and they would be ever so happy to help with that. And at other times the rumor mill was more blatant as her colleagues griped about students or ogled the new math teacher at the copy machine.

But today she needed a break from the routine of grading through lunch as she munched her way through a bland ham sandwich. Jane realized this when she woke up with pen smudges across her forehead ten minutes before the lunch bell rang. Even though she scrubbed they hadn’t come off very easily and she had to spend the rest of the afternoon with her bangs strangely fluffed to hide the faded smudges.

 So today Jane ventured into the teacher’s lounge with her sack lunch clutched in front of her and a smile plastered to her face like pieces of armor. Only a few teachers looked up. Most were too absorbed in their conversations to see her. But Darcy Lewis, the senior US Government teacher, leapt from the couch and ran over to her, enveloping Jane in a spine cracking hug.

 “I haven’t seen you for a while! You need to stop by my classroom more often, or I might think that a black hole ate you or something,” Darcy said, removing her arms from around Jane.

Jane resisted the urge to rub her arms. She was friends with Darcy, but didn’t appreciate her lack of regard personal space at times. “Sometimes I feel like it,” she sighed.

Darcy walked back over to the couch, plopping onto its sagging, hideously loud 70s patterned cushions. She patted the seat next to her, and Jane took the nonverbal hint, sitting down next to Darcy and sinking into the depths of the sofa.

“So, what’s new with you?” Darcy asked, picking up an apple from the coffee table in front of them and biting into it.

 Jane dug around in her lunch sack, pulling out the standard ham sandwich. “Nothing much. I recently finished a unit on the atmosphere and the sun, and most of my classes did well on the test, though second period didn’t.”

“Why is that?” Darcy worked her tongue against a molar that had a piece of apple stuck in it.

 Jane looked away from that sight. “I think it’s just the mixture of personalities. There’s a lot of outgoing kids that all know each other in that class that would rather talk than pay attention.” She sighed.

Darcy patted her shoulder in sympathy. “I know how that goes. My third period would rather browse the internet on their phones than learn about gerrymandering.”

Jane didn’t admit that she would probably also rather look at Facebook updates that learn about gerrymandering. She took her ham sandwich out of its plastic wrap and took a bite of it, only half listening as Darcy rambled about Congress. In the corner of her eye, she saw a tall teacher enter the lounge with a stack of folders in his arms.

Darcy punched her in the shoulder, causing a small piece of lettuce to fall out of her sandwich as she jumped. Jane whipped her head around and gave a glare. “What was that for?”

 “Two students in one of my classes yesterday thought that you and Loki have the hots for each other,” Darcy whispered.

 Jane coughed on a piece of ham. “What? No! English teachers and science teachers mix like oil and water,” she said. And she thought those words exactly proved her point because he would no doubt criticize her use of such a cliched adage.

 Darcy gave her a crooked smile. “Then why are you vehemently denying it?”

“I’m not! I’m just saying that I don’t want rumors like that to spread,” she hissed, lowering her voice even further.

“Maybe it’s best if you don’t really like him, since you don’t seem to know what the word vehement means.” Darcy took another loud bite from her apple.

 Jane glanced at the aforementioned senior English teacher. His brows were furrowed as the copier machine whined and coughed.

 “Yeah, you just keep denying when you like at him like that,” Darcy said.

 Jane pulled her eyes away, her fingers pressing dents into the bread of her sandwich. “Like what?”

 Darcy raised her hands. “I’m not going to keep arguing about this, if you just keep refusing to acknowledge the fact that you were checking him out.”

 And this was why Jane did not like the teacher’s lounge. It was the den of salacious gossip tossed between pursed lips and narrowed eyes. Even if Darcy was a friend, Jane was getting fed up with it. “You know, I think I forgot about a stack of papers I need to grade. My fifth period will complain even more if I don’t get it back to them tomorrow.”

 Darcy sighed, slumping back into the back of the couch. The blaring yellow print embraced her. “Fine. But you better stop by my classroom before Friday to make up bailing on me.”

 “Right! Yes. I will do that. Mm-hmm,” Jane said, cramming her lunch back into her sack, not entirely sure of what she had just agreed to.

Loki was coming straight towards them and time was running out. “Ms. Foster—” he began.

 “Oh, so sorry!” She held up her wrist, and then dropped it when she realized when she wasn’t wearing a watch. Jane glanced to the clock at the back of the room. “I’ve got to be going. Talk to Darcy about Congressional corruption, she’d love to hear your thoughts on it, I’m sure.”

Darcy bit the bait and grabbed his arm, pulling him down to the couch. “Yeah! I’d love to hear your thoughts on political theory, since English is basically like the friendly, distant cousin to political science.”

Jane scampered out of the room before she could hear the rest of the conversation, fist digging into the top of her sack lunch.

 —

Jane was through the middle of her last class when Loki knocked on her door frame. Jane almost didn’t look away from her slide on elliptical galaxies. She looked from her students, and back to Loki, who waited with raised eyebrows and hand of papers. One of the girls in the front row popped a bubble of her chewing gum and glanced at the Mr. Laufeyson, then back to Jane, and gave her a nod and thumbs up. Girl code hadn’t changed enough from her high school days for Jane not to know that the gesture meant, Good job. That’s a hot one.

 “Just a moment, class,” she said, keeping her forceful smile on, holding up a finger. Her students were already pulling out their phones.

 Jane made her way to the back of the room, aware that more than a few of her student’s eyes were on her. She crossed her arms and looked up at the other teacher.

 “Yes, what do you need?” she asked in a hushed voice.

 Loki waved the papers under her nose. “You left a stack of these next to the copy machine. Please do be more careful next time,” he said, pushing them towards her.

She didn’t take them yet. “I was going to pick them up after class. There was no need to bring them here,” Jane told him.

 Her refusal to take them only made him continue to wave the papers. “Actually, there was a need. Your star charts got mixed up with my Beowulf test print outs, which caused me to spend more time than I needed to sorting through the papers. Carelessness is a bad trait in a teacher, don’t you think?” He gave her a smile that was laced with insincerity.

 Jane bit her lip, refusing to take the bait. She had to get back to her class, so she just grabbed the papers and jabbed a finger at him, making sure her back was angled so that none of her students could see the motion.

“Will that be all?” Jane asked, her voice like poisoned honey.

"I believe so, yes. Unless you want to talk about the fact that you left pieces of lettuce on the teacher’s lounge couch, which got stuck to my pants.” He flicked his hand at a stain she would not have noticed had he not pointed it out.

“Goodbye, Mr. Laufeyson,” Jane said, loud enough so the class could hear.

“Goodbye,” he replied, once again stiff and formal. She saw through it in a second, and so could anyone else. Especially her students. They had to deal with two faced people like him every day in the jungle of their social hierarchy.

He left her door, and Jane went back to the front of the room, papers held loosely in her hand. Dropping them on the desk that held the projector, she turned on heel to face her class, pressing the palms of her hands together. She flicked her eyes to the notes. “Sorry about the interruption. Now, where were we?”

 The bubble popping girl raised her hand. Jane suppressed a sigh, but called on her anyway. “Yes, Janice?”

 The girl pushed her bangs out of her face with a smirk. “I think we were talking about gravitational attraction.” The class hummed with laughter.

Jane felt a burn begin to crawl up her cheeks, but she just shook her head with a laugh, brushing her hair across the side of her face. “No, I’m afraid that’s not correct.”

 “Could have fooled me,” Janice said.

 Jane turned her back to the girl, and glued her eyes to the shining slide of an elliptical galaxy sitting in the middle of space. She cleared her throat, took a breath, and readied herself to plow through the rest of this day that seemed to only continue to spiral downward.

—

The rest of the day was thankfully void of any more embarrassing incidents, and most importantly of all, she did not see Loki again, not even when she passed by the English hallway. Jane was on cloud nine as the week proceeded in a similar fashion, her only annoyance stemming from students turning in their work late or not paying close enough attention.

But her cloud dissipated by Friday when Darcy came into her room during lunch, plopping a sack lunch on her desk, and sitting down in the chair in front of her with a scowl. “Some friend you are,” Darcy said with a deep pout.

Jane looked up from an extra credit essay that discussed the formation of stars. Her surprise at seeing Darcy left a green pen squiggle beneath a grammatically perfect sentence. Jane bit her lip. “Did I say I would come to see you this week?”

Darcy rolled her eyes and fished out a protein bar from her lunch sack. “Duh.”

“Well, you could always talk to Ms. Potts about reforming campaign funds,” Jane said, going back to the essay.

“Are you kidding me? I don’t think she would care about that. Besides, her high powered exec boyfriend comes to visit all the time during lunch. It’s kind of funny, actually.” Darcy munched on the protein bar. Jane flicked away a dusting of crumbs that had sprinkled onto the papers.

“Well, what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, finger tracking her place in the essay.

“Whatever you want,” Darcy said.

“Can our conversation wait until I’ve at least finished this essay?” She leaned closer to it, scribbling a few corrections in the margins.

 “Sure. I’m not in a hurry.”

With that, the two of them sat quietly for a few minutes, the only sounds being Darcy’s chewing and the scratch of Jane’s pen. Soon Jane was done with the essay, completing her job by underlining the student’s grade with a flourish of her pen. Darcy put her elbow on the desk and leaned her chin against her palm.

“Now that you’re done with that, you can tell me about your encounter with Loki on Monday,” she said, pressing her lips together in a way that said, I already know everything because of my students, but spill anyway.

Jane sighed and put her head in her hands. She rubbed a hand through her hair. “There’s nothing to tell you other than the fact that he came into my class on Monday to give me some papers that got mixed up with his own test copies.”

“Wow, that version of the story just removed everything interesting about it and turned it into some kind of scientific report. I’d say you’re highly qualified for your job,” Darcy said with a sigh. She picked up Jane’s now unused pen and began to click it. “I heard that you had a pretty heated little exchange about being careless.”

Jane closed her eyes. “Did the students hear that?”

“Yu _p_.” Darcy popped her lips on the last letter.

“I was trying my best to be quiet about it.”

“Jane, you do realize that high schoolers are human beings that are at their peak ability to be able to sniff out hormones a mile away?”

Jane glared. “There were no hormones.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow and took out a boxed salad. “Uh huh.”

“And how’s your love life?” Jane countered.

“Oh, you know. Ben and Jerry are the main guys in my life right now.” Darcy stabbed her lettuce.

“So is that why you’re so interested in my own non-existent love life? You need someone to live vicariously through?” Jane tilted her head with a smile.

Darcy put a hand to her heart. “I plead to the fifth.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “Can we maybe drop this topic?”

“I guess we can if you really want to,” Darcy sighed. “Would you rather talk about Congressional oversight?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to talk about H II regions indicating O-type and B-type stars?” Jane asked, the terms rolling of her tongue.

Darcy’s eyes widened and her mouth twisted in horror. At least she had the grace to swallow her salad before doing that. “What language are you speaking?”

The side of Jane’s mouth turned up. “I take that as a no, then.”

“You win this jargon round, Ms. Foster,” Darcy said, pointing the fork at her.

They continued on through the rest of lunch in silence, which surprised Jane. She didn’t think that Darcy was capable of keeping her mouth shut for that long. But maybe it helped that her jaw was currently occupied by chewing. As the lunch hour teetered on the edge of 12:30, Darcy stood with a smile, packing her garbage away into her paper sack.

“What do you look so happy about?” Jane asked. She was already half through another essay.

“I have to grade some practice FRQs from my AP government class about Iron Triangles and Concurrent powers.”

Jane quietly applauded. “And now you win this round of incomprehensible terms.”

Darcy twirled her hand and bent at the waist in a bow, spreading her arms wide with a smile. “I do what I can,” she said, and walked out.

—

That weekend, Jane analyzed her interactions with Loki. Surely they had been nothing but hostile? Their encounters in the past had hardly been favorable before.

Once she dropped a file in front of him when they were walking down the hallway and he didn’t even slow down. He just looked annoyed at her and kept walking. Then there was the time in October during a meeting when he commented that she would probably be able to chaperon the Harvest Dance since she didn’t assign her students very much work, and thus wouldn’t have much to grade that weekend.

And there was to say nothing of their little interactions that were always abrupt and sharp. No, there could be nothing more to it than Loki being a smug, pretentious jerk with his head so full of information about Canterbury tales and Oscar Wilde quotes that he had no room left to remember how to actually be a decent person.

—

Before class on Monday Jane was checking her power point to make sure that she had all the information that she needed on nebulae. She was making a few corrections here and there, trimming down any extraneous language. That was when she jumped at a knock against her door. She swiveled around in her rolling chair.

“Darcy I don’t really have time right—” her hand grew limp as she was readying to point it. “…Loki? What do you want?”

Jane wanted to make a snide comment about wondering whether he was coming to finish their argument, but she wasn’t in the mood to begin to morning on the wrong foot. She was already running on little more than a thermos of coffee and a piece of burnt toast.

“I wanted to get your input on the relevance discussing the Norse using the stars to navigate in my next lesson,” he said, taking her acknowledgement of him as an invitation to step into the room.

“Er…well, I’m sort of busy right now. I’m not sure I’d be much help, anyway. I don’t know much about Beowulf or the Norse,” she said, laying her hand against the arm of her chair.

“Shall we discuss it during lunch, then?” Loki held a palm up.

Jane’s eyes flicked to the power point, then back to Loki. She should say no. The less time she spent around him, the better. Any conversations they had were likely to end in hostilities. But it was rare that anyone approached Jane for advice, and perhaps this future conversation could help smooth things over between the two of them.

“…All right?” she said. She didn’t mean the last sounds of her words to curl up into a question, but they did.

Loki inclined his head in what seemed to be his attempt in nodding politely. “Excellent.”

Jane rolled her chair back up to the desk and placed her fingers against the keys. She blinked. Had that really just happened? Had she really just willingly allowed Loki into her domain? She pressed her hands to her face and shook her head. Hopefully none of the students from her last period saw him come in during lunch, or they would have even more fodder for their rumors.

Jane slowly inhaled, counting backwards from ten to release the tension in her chest. She pressed a smile to her face, hoping that if she pretended to be happy long enough then the falsity would become truth

It would be fine

It would be completely fine.


End file.
